


abcs of smut

by sittinsideface



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23241679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sittinsideface/pseuds/sittinsideface
Summary: prompt fills using the nsfw headcanon game by the-coldest-goodbye.tumblr.com/nsfw-template・ smut level, length, style, and au vary part to part・ blends of book and show canon・ content advisories and word counts at the top of each chapter note; opt in and out as you wish; do let me know if i miss something
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 42
Kudos: 138





	1. a = aftercare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set: S8E02  
> content: canon-typical ptsd/flashbacks, canon-typical unprotected intercourse  
> words: 1157

Patterns end like lives.

And for as long as she’s lived, the pattern’s gone like this: brave until you’re ~~not~~

Chasing cats thrilled her until the dragonskull closed its teeth around her in the pitch dark of the dungeons. Tossing the prince’s inbred sword into the Trident was high summertime glory until the deed was done and paid for with two direwolves. Calling the Waif a cunt to her face was her godsgiven right—both as a Cleganian ward and a bitch colder than her—until she bled out from her stomach a river redder than the branches of her family name.

Stark.

But patterns end. And on the same night Arya Stark proffers her list to the God of Death, she whispers against his will, one name.

_“Gendry—”_

_“Gendry,”_

_“Gendry.”_

One name she lets dress her voice in pleas. Over and over to make it last, to beg with air, fingers of that name rubbing circles over and into her dripping flesh, fingers calloused and wet, drawing in and out until all she could want is all that there’s left to want.

And it’s lightning across the heavens.

The stretch, the pressure, the shock. She’d handled so many bodies before, washed them, mutilated them, buried them. But to be with Gendry and the heat that surges beneath his skin, a body that’s held so much rage, so much loss—still he joins her with so much _life_ to give.

To fuck the way a smith should is to polish; with _“hope to keep you like this forever”_ — and _“Wouldn’t you like that?”_ and _“Keep it down”_ and _“You’re the only one I could love like this_.”

Amidst the touch of his forehead on hers and the iron grip on her hips, she comes apart at the words— _If there will be no one else, let it be because we chose so_ —and the tapestry of her body unwinds to thread, all discord and disheveled, in search of one even breath. He lays a haggard kiss on her neck while his release pulses inside of her; a simple kiss in his wake feels like sending a droplet from a distant sky to a field of flames.

So she collapses beside him when it’s over, the aftershocks tingling starshine in her senses, her name in his voice rolling like thunder in her head, _Arya, Arya, Arya_ , like a second heartbeat. She nearly forgets herself. _No, you are not the sky, clouds opened to let the storm sing, rain painting the skin of your thighs. This is Winterfell. You are snow and the cold and warm is not a gift but something you borrow and—_

_It’s my cloak._

_And now, his atop it._

_Layers. He’s learned._

_It’s just like him to do this._

Arya did not plan this far ahead but she stopped expecting sleep when the wildings arrived and brought the fate of Last Hearth. _In through the nose and out through the mouth_ , the way she learned recovers the body the fastest. She needs to be woven whole again, composed, else—

“We haven’t done this in years,” he says.

It takes her a moment to grasp his meaning. Those years ago on the Kingsroad when they slept beside each other; did he still think about them? About her? Beside each other now, she’s beside herself, and it’s both too close and too far for her wits to bear.

She catches the laugh in her throat like quick hands around a river trout and she turns her head to where the pearl light of the moon trickles in at the edge of the granary. She’s heard that men fall asleep fast afterwards, and she’s certain Gendry will be one of them. It was one of the only things she bore gratitude for when they were children together, how easily he’d fall like a rock after nightfall, how much sooner she could recite her prayer.

Now she has nothing left to pray for.

Until Gendry slides his hand to hers beneath their cloaks and laces her fingers between his. His _fingers_ —

She budges. She can grant him this so long as it does not distract from what’s to come. She watches a moth and its shadow dance in the ballroom of a brazier.

“Arya?” he whispers.

 ** _Don’t look_** , she hears. She watches the torchlight at the end of the walkway, where yellow fades to pearl, pearl like oysters from her daily cart. If there was time, she’d have asked for dragonglass to be fixed to the points of all the bows so they could still have use of them when they run out of arrows. _We’re going to run out of arrows._

“Can I hold you?”

_Holding will not save us. We have to loose._

**_Don’t look._ **

When he squeezes her hand, she turns to face him, him with his head so far in some dream of her. There is something in his eyes so simple and waiting, the way a book does not ask for much when it opens, but still unasked, it holds all of home in its pages.

It reminds her of being stabbed. Like when Hot Pie called her pretty, some spike lodged in her stomach. And she prefers it not to matter, these opinions of men, but that does not stop it from affecting her anyway.

In fact, the more she looks at Gendry, the more she sees Hot Pie. Because Gendry’s face is soft and earnest, a face The Bull shows to no one. Because Arya has trained in reading faces. Because the way Hot Pie said “you’re pretty” was more so to say “I want you to _know_ that you’re pretty,” just like the way Gendry says “Can I hold you?” is more just to tell her “I want you to _know_ you ought to be held.”

So she nods and her head lifts like she’s done this before when he stretches his muscled limb beneath her neck and her body turns to his chest as he curls a soft cage around her back. Something about the quiet pronounces the noise in her bones, and it’s different, different from what they just did together, different with their bodies like this, a dungeon, a leash on Lady’s neck, a riven twisting in her gut.

She tries to forget this, but her body remembers. **_Don’t look._** The first time death swept her senses, everything around her readied to home in hell, she felt one embrace wrapped around her body, holding her, like a fist might hope to hold smoke, like a bottle might hope to hold time; Yoren.

The lesson remembers her: it hurts to let go once you’ve been held so tight.

She holds Gendry in return and he’s warm, borrowed. For now the moonlight of the battlements are behind her.

And Arya decides that she is not above stealing. She has always been a thief of names.


	2. b = body part

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set: all around season 8 and the long night, and after, but without any of 8x04 lol  
> content: canon-typical unprotected intercourse, exhibitionism by proxy  
> words: 4,500
> 
> this one was supposed to be like 400 words and the first three parts were gonna post in the same week but. 'writing is rewriting' and i should have listened. i'm still in this though. thank you for sticking around!

The drinks here taste like stale rushes. A smarter man would regret pouring so much of it, but Gendry, Gendry of the House of Just a Bastard, actually likes it. For that very taste, the one so irreplicable in silver chalices and gilded halls, is the only thing precise enough to wake a certain Southron alehouse from the back of his mind.

At least he has an excuse.

Podrick, who insists on playing this stupid game, is one foamy upper lip from pissing Wintertown unto the coast.

And they can’t afford another disaster in the North. It’s been three moons since they won the war against the Others. Still counting, the living spend their days repairing and restoring the homes and establishments of “the smallfolk,” or as Gendry calls them, “the people.”

The innkeeper, Loreyne, welcomes their ragged litter with a smile as wide and yellow as the sun they so sorely miss. A barrel of their finest on the house, she offers, but the Knight of the Hollow Hill leaves a weighty satchel of coin on a cabinet anyway. Along with the silent promise to return and reinforce the sagging shelves peeking at him through the kitchen curtain.

If only he could spare Loreyne from the rest of this torment.

Pod’s taken to tallying the tits men and the ass men. Name an allegiance and your ilk drinks with you in sloppy unison around the tavern.

Gendry tries to imagine Ser Brienne in all of this. Cups tilting foolishly as Podrick surveys the men. Bawdry spilling from their mouths as freely as the ale. Gendry doesn't buy it for a second that Pod learned these sorts of games from his squiring. Brothels more likely.

Warmth blooms in Gendry's cheeks, tingly and uneasily like the drumming of pointy fingernails on the inside of his flesh. Men are loud. As soon as he empties this serving, he's riding back alone.

When the turn reaches him, he wants to shout _fists_ to get Podrick off his back, hoping the next swig Pod takes from either of his cups (tit cup, ass cup, the ardent fool) will finally knock him into the ground.

Though if he had to really think about it, Gendry’s favorite part of Arya’s body isn’t as obvious. What really comes to mind, what he really says, is what’s so singularly _her_.

* * *

He’d worn his back out that day.

All the bending forward to the ground, all the retracting of his hips. The sweaty repetition left his spine heated with a loud, aching glow.

They put him in charge of retrieving and sorting the fallen weapons from the field. An effort that'd outlast another dynasty what with bodies ribboned to the farthest curve of the earth, making a mass grave out of the horizon.

Even with days between them and the fall of the Night King, his stomach still turns like a cracked wheel walking over a millennia's worth of nameless corpses. Nerves can't shake the look of their eyes opening around him in frigid, haunted unison.

As they heave the bodies to pyre, he focuses instead on the ancient craftwork spilled out of time's own furnace before him. Crude arrowheads carved out of dark green, unnameable stones. Dragonglass axes with bone handles and balance Gendry is loathe to achieve. Small wonders take his mind off the arakhs and fisherspears amongst them.

When Jon comes over and tells Gendry to relieve himself from the collection, that enough of the survivors from the crypts had received treatment and could help, Gendry refuses. He wasn't above menial and tedium in the Riverlands, he wouldn't be so in Winterfell either.

Still, he notices the change. Courtesies extend themselves to the smithy that hadn't before. Lady Sansa offers a servant. Someone to fill the tubs, collect clothes for washing, deliver supper, make things easier after such hardship, she says.

Though he refuses once more, he still finds pepperings of herbs in his bathwater (if that's a message in particular, he ignores it).

 _Castle dwellers_ , he mutters in his mind. The orange peels, he recognizes. The small, purpley petals that cling to his body like bruises when he stands, he does not.

It’s warm enough in the smithy tonight to walk in his towel as he readies for sleep.

Until a chill breaks through the doors with a crash—some heaving beast appearing at the cold wind’s behest. When it snarls, pointed ears tip backwards in a shivering menace, the sharp points of incisors telling Gendry to think twice before he acts.

In truth, he'd feel more afraid were this a week ago.

A wolf pack by the hundreds helped them turn the tide in the War for the Dawn. He'd seen one tear into the pus-filled belly of an undead ice spider and then maim its wight rider to shards. He'd also seen them wag their tails as they pulled wagons for the relief effort or played together in rolling heaps on the grounds. By now, the creatures were as common a sight in Winterfell as the falling snow.

In fact, the only thing that scares him now about the growling direwolf before him is the strange abyss of marbled gray where its eyes used to be.

The wolf presses a single paw forward. Still beyond the fog in its eyes, its stare is deep. And laden with some curious intent.

“You don’t like gloves,” Gendry blurts out from who knows what impulse. The wolf gives him a snort out of its nose, a calm one, possibly. “Yes," he moves slowly, the way the Starks taught him. _Remain calm when a wolf approaches you. They can sense your fear._

"She told me about you. Tried to house train you as a pup, but you hated it.” The wolf tilts her snout to the side, curtaining shut the threat of her bite when she drops her bubbling lips. “It’s some queen’s name, some history book—Nan. No, Nim! Nim, Nim-something.”

The direwolf calmly walks over to his basket of clothes, nudges it open with her snout, and paces back to the door. Nim sits on her hind legs and waits.

All of the North and its guests carry a reverent wind for the animals. One that Gendry seems to have caught with ease since he follows along almost unthinkingly. He only hesitates a moment before removing his towel, and then shakes his head at the thought of maintaining decency for a wild animal. He dresses with some haste.

By the time he fastens the fur-lined cloak around his neck, he remembers.

“Nymeria."

Immediately, she turns and begins to dash across the courtyard, forcing Gendry's feet behind her. “Wait! Nymeria!” He does not know what is happening, but it is happening.

Nymeria proves herself able to see just fine. They weave through the stray Northroners in the yard, nearly all of them paying no mind to the walking myth of the Stark banner. She leads him all the way to the First Keep, turning her furry neck around to face him every so often, her tongue hanging out as if to say _Is this the best you can do?_ After ice spiders, Gendry must not make as interesting a toy.

When they get to the top of the stairs, the guards seeming to let him pass for being wolf-accompanied, Nymeria turns the corner, rubs the side of her body against a certain door, and nudges it ajar. Gendry watches as her pupils return to her eyes with a single blink.

Suddenly, Nymeria seems calmer. So calm, she's disinterested. She simply walks away.

Unsure of what this all means, he can only catch his breath. Gendry hates running. It's late in the evening. And he's already been brought this far, presumably for a reason. He hopes it isn't trouble.

Half hopes.

When he walks in, Arya sits up in bed as if she’s just woken from a nap, her brown hair gently frayed and gray eyes still adjusting. _Of course._ Spots of dried blood prickle one side of the cloth strips wrapped around her forehead, reminding him both that she should be resting, and that nothing can really stop Arya from meddling in what she wants to.

“You know most people have their dogs fetch sticks, not people,” Gendry says, the air returning to his lungs. The thick wooden door seals shut behind him.

“I don’t know which is worse," Arya responds. "That you find her simply a dog or me most people.” The stiff of her brow only softens when she lets a sly curve edge her lips. He can only sigh.

"Good thing I don't."

When she stands, the hem of her shift brushes the middle of her thigh. Gendry can almost believe he's never seen her this bare, this delicate, but his memory disproves him, pleasantly.

She walks to him as if on water. Or maybe as if in drill. He's seen her approach men in training like this: hands clasped behind her back, chin sharper than a command. Her eyes hold two pools of a storming sky that he'd let swallow him whole if she declared that today's practice.

Her slender face leans in to his chest, hovering like she holds the edge of a cliff at her toes; an endless patience for the inch she leaves between them. "You smell nice," she says.

 _Remain calm when a wolf approaches you_.

"Someone keeps leaving fresh flowers in my tub. I suspect it's some rogue, rich girl."

"How vile of her." She's always been quick. "Have you considered revenge? I'm quite good at it."

"Mm," he mulls. "Too easy. I prefer doing something she won't expect."

The curl in her hair fits perfectly behind the ear he traces with his fingertips. _Just so_ , like she would say.

"Maybe you should thank her," she drawls. Her jaw moves against his thumb when she speaks, the rhythm resting on the shelf of his index finger.

Half meaning it, he asks, "What could I possibly give worth wanting from a _princess_?"

She chuckles, apt for the farce she puts up every time she resists these names she likes so much. From him, at least. It's darling of her.

"Your mouth," she answers. Instructs.

If Arya's a cliff, then such temptation is in excess; Gendry is always falling.

And poised to pull her with him.

When her eyes close, he ducks her kiss. This is how he moves her: with a loyal disobedience. Like cutting the lock off a cage in order to free the awaiting chase. The kind that pulls at the back of his hair like handfuls of grass as he savors her neck. The kind that claws at his shoulders as he sinks to his knees. That protests in heavy gasps until he raises the thin curtain of her shift and hears her body resign to an expectant sigh.

 _Your mouth_ , she wants.

 _Over the edge_ , he sets his sights.

When her legs part, he palms the line of her waist as if in prayer and uses his thumbs to tug upward. The dark hair tucks under his grip, revealing the small, pink swell of nerves. He lays his tongue to it, wide and soft to start, and licks.

It's a position of nothing but obedience, of offering and of service. But when he tilts his head back, he sees her watching him, pleased and eager as a huntress over its prey, her gaze raining over him like summer's light, as hot as the hand she lays on his cheek. As above, so below—and obedience in tandem bears a wild pleasure that is all in its sharing; his to taste and hers to take.

“Fuck,” she whimpers, the weakness in her voice as rare as a falling star. “I need to lay down."

It's all he needs to stand, the slightest cry of _too far_. "I can get the maester," he huffs, wiping his mouth on one sleeve and reaching to the bandage on her temple with the other.

A slap stings his wrist.

"Not that, idiot." Arya pulls him by the arm to the side of her bed. "I need to enjoy this proper," she says as she shoves his tunic up his torso.

"Forgive my manners, _m'lady_."

"Don't," she punctuates with the drop of his shirt to the floor.

"I'm sorry," he says. Her fingers fiddle at the ties of his trousers. "Old habits." Thumbs hook into the bands at his waist. " _Your_ _grace_." An affronted stillness.

"The more you talk, the tighter my legs close together, is that what you want?"

"Arya," his nose brushes forward to hers. "You usually like it when I talk."

"And what could you possibly say worth hearing?" A playful spite in the repetition.

"That I assumed a rich girl could afford a finer sleep dress." The look of offense on her face is worth his weight in gold. Together his hands pinch at the collar of her garment, rubbing it between his fingers in assessment—"Material as thin as this"—and rips it down the middle—"Does you no good."

She drags him by the neck, anchoring his body atop hers on the bed, her fevered kisses verging on anger, on urgency, her feet kicking his pants the rest of the way down his legs.

"Then prove to me what would, _Ser_ ," she nearly hisses through clenched teeth, all heat and steam.

Once again he takes the treasured descent. And finds her there glistening and giving. Legs fold upwards over his head and onto his shoulders like a latch, holding his mouth to where it belongs, where it is fruitful and warm. It feels like he could stay here forever so long as her hips keep rolling in applause like this. His tongue builds in pressure, rubbing up and down in search of the same depth her heels dig in the flesh of his back.

When she unravels, she's hardly still, but still he stays with her. It's his best won prize, to taste her when she's happiest.

Arya's keen to indulge too, not the least bit sated when she brings him by the sides of his head to her and tastes her sex in his mouth. _Good enough?_ he was going to ask, but that seems pointless now, even in jest.

As her tongue curls around his, her hand begins to slide down his chest.

It's rude to leave the princess wanting.

Her fingers wrap around him and align him to her, wetting the head of his cock up and down between her folds, a near perfect feeling. They've become bolder already. That's one of the best things to come from their first night together. The way she kissed him before they parted to their flanks, as deep as her arms were tight around him. Since their survival, it hasn't been a matter of when they could do this but how. What new pleasures could they conjure? What games and foul teases?

He's fooling himself to think he can take this. "Please," he gruffs against her cheek.

"Please what?" she says, plainly, as if she is so free of blame and mischief.

His forehead touches hers over the bandages, just enough for him to look right into her. "Please let me _fuck you_ as desperately as you summoned me here to."

He'd get his punches in where he could if she'd let him. Arya bites his lip, hard, as he feels himself enter her between her legs. Once she takes the fullness of him, they linger.

"How the hell did I used to live like that? Not knowing you felt like this?" Gendry begins slowly, drawing his body in and out of her in short strokes.

"I'd say you're exaggerating, but I'm thinking the same thing," she pants in response, running her hands up the sensitive sides of his body.

"I counted," he says as he quickens the pace, her body arching into him in kind. "The amount of days since I arrived in Winterfell. I wanted to know how many there were to regret when we could've been doing this the whole time." Arya's fingers begin to tighten between his where he holds them beside her head. "If only it weren't for all those other men in the forge."

"Wouldn't have mattered," she says.

"Really?"

"Would it have stopped you?"

He pauses the entirety of his body, and exhales. Gendry looks down to where they're joined at the hip and pouts, his eyebrows tipping upward in agreement.

"No," he answers frankly, and pulls himself out of her to the tip, before thrusting into her again in one swift movement.

He fucks her like this for several beats, with a mounting force that drives Arya's voice higher and wilder.

"I'd fuck you anywhere," he whispers against her cries. "I'd fuck you on one of those stages you like so much. In front of the world so they could see how beautiful you are with your mouth open like this." His thumb tucks between her parted lips and whether by instinct or by cornering, she closes around him and sucks. "When you peak,"—the other thumb slips between her legs—"they'd clap." Her moans grow ever helpless beneath him. "They'd cheer. They'd say _'Arya— Arya— Arya—'"_ What a warrior, reduced to taut whines at her own name. _"'Come, Arya.'"_

She does. Gloriously. _Over the edge._

He follows quickly, withdrawing in time to finish on her belly. As he recovers himself, he enjoys the haze on Arya's face, shut eyes and pulsing breaths, painted in sweat and strain yet still one of the only times he ever sees her truly at rest. Her cheek is saltwater on his lips.

After some time, he moves. Gendry reaches to the ground for a piece of her torn shift and cleans her with it.

He knows it’s rude to stare, but he can't help noticing the skin underneath where he wipes; he always notices her here.

"Don't start." Of course she's caught him.

"What?" he reacts dumbly, dropping the balled up fabric to the floor.

Arya props herself up on her elbows. "Everyone's been treating me like I'm some poor, fragile thing. I don't need that from you too."

"Oh, forgive me," he clutches his heart, as if in great pain. "Our invincible hero of Winterfell."

"Don't call me that." She pinches him on the bicep. And twists. He knows he deserves it, but Gendry can't stop himself when they get like this. They always get like this.

"How'd you get them?" he asks, gingerly tracing the scars on her abdomen like a letter. "They have dragons short as you across the Narrow Sea?"

"Yes. And boys big and oafish as you too." Arya tries to kick him, but his body is too close to hers. He stills her legs and laughs, rubbing the sides of her hips up and down playfully. "Come to think of it, I think they were actually _bigger_ than you," she adds.

"Oh really?" He crawls up to brush the tip of his nose to hers and kisses her there. "Other boys don't know you like I do."

Arya smiles before kissing him sweetly in return.

"What happened while you were gone?" The question hangs like twine, waiting to be either cut down or joined to something. He realizes too late that he says this as if she were supposed to stay or even return to the Crossroads. _What happened_ after _you were gone?_ he'd have phrased it if he knew better. If he still believed in a vision of time without interims, in such a thing as _after_ Arya.

When she doesn't answer, he sits back by his heels. "You going to tell me already or do I have to beat it out of The Hound?" Maybe if they're outside of kissing range, she'll take him seriously.

"Please try that. I do enjoy to laugh."

"Doesn't he hate fire? I could just walk him into the forge." He gestures in the air at the direction he assumes that he ran over from. Gendry's no better at navigation than Arya is, though he'd never admit that.

"He doesn't _hate_ fire. It's more like. _Fire_ doesn't like _him_."

"... I don't get it." Gendry's referring more to their unusual friendship than he is what she's saying.

"You'd still lose."

"Fine." Gendry leans forward on one palm, the other gliding small touches on her scars. "Then who's left to ask about these?"

Quietly, Arya places her hand over his on her torso. Her expression does not change, but he can tell when there's something hiding beneath it.

All he's seen is death these days. And it doesn't take a maester's education to know that no one with this kind of wound lasts. Perhaps his question is as impossible as the answer she protects. After all, fighters _like_ to brag about the good ones. Only the ugliest fights are rewritten with silence.

He moves to hold her, leaning against a pillow on the headboard and letting her rest on his chest, his arms necklaced around her.

"You don't have to tell me," he says, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. "I just want to know if you're still in danger."

"I took care of it. She’s dead."

"She?"

"Yes. Women can be Faceless Men too."

"Faceless—" Gendry remembers the way Tobho used to jape about petty thieves running around the alleys, fighting over pigeons in pot shops. _Ain't worth sending no Faceless after._ "They're... costly," is all he says as he tries to imagine what— _who?_ —could've sent a Faceless woman after Arya.

"So are Braavosi courtesans. See how much value you get out of me?"

"You're not a whore."

"You don't know that. I could be anyone."

"You're Arya."

"To you."

He's confused.

And it must show considerably on his face because Arya decides to be nice to him for a change.

"I mean that in a good way," she says. "I wasn't. Myself. For a long time."

He doesn't want to push her, he's decided. He just wants her to be okay. "But you are now?" he asks.

"It helps when you're here."

"Why me?"

She laughs, confusing him again. It shouldn't be so easy to do that. Arya shakes her head.

"Because I was always something to worry about in this house. Now, Sansa needs a second annulment, Bran's barely speaking, and Jon—" She hesitates a moment longer than he's comfortable with. "Jon's a dragon."

Gendry means to tell her that Jon's betrothal doesn't stop him from being her brother, but she speaks ahead of him.

"And don't even get me started on Rickon. He shouldn't have fought with us out there. Or at least he shouldn't have been so smug about it. Oh _no_ , he doesn't _need_ your weapons, he has his _own_ black blade from _Skagos_. A _unicorn_ horn hilt. Could you believe that? The little shit. He's ten and _three_."

“... Your dagger’s dragonbone.”

“Not the point, smith." Arya lets go of his hand to flick Gendry on the temple. Whatever hesitance was in her voice before is gone now and of that he's grateful. It's always a good sign when Arya speaks freely like this. She used to always love to talk.

"He barely remembers me," she says. "Shaggydog loves Nymeria but,” a long sigh through her nose—why do her brothers seem to give her so much pause?—“The truth is I can barely remember him either.”

“You don’t have to. He’s back. He’s here—”

“He looks like Robb. He looks just like Robb. I feel like that should make me happy.”

He knows why it hurts to think about her eldest brother. As does everyone in Westeros. And yet their family is alone in the feeling, beacons of tragedy in a sea of incongruous sympathy. He searches for the right thing to say where the gods have only left them empty and razed. What do you lay at the feet of grief's living martyrs? What but the tears that they already have?

A little tighter, he holds her.

"I don't want to be another thing for people to worry about," she says.

Guilt stirs, low in the belly like roused brush. If she means to make it a promise out of him, he'll break it where he lays.

"All right then. I won't worry about you," he lies with affection. (And if that isn't such a thing then he makes it one.) He releases her to the sound of her scoff, bends over her midsection and kisses her scars. "I won't worry about you in the morning." Another kiss. "I won't worry about you in the midday sun." Another kiss. "I won't worry about you under the evening stars."

A kiss after every thing right and wrong in the world. In the hail, another kiss. In the sleet, another kiss. Atop the branches of the Wolfswood, yet another. In between grains of sand, and at the points of every raging river that would rush to divide them.

 _"Stop it! That tickles!"_ she wriggles in complaint, in abject aggression really. But he doesn't. He recalls fondly, the girl that likes to wrestle, and presses affection to the old wound over and over until laughter is the only thing her body can do. He plays the sweet sound like an instrument, and wishes it could be the only thing her body had ever known.

A smarter man would have asked sooner. So he could have sent a mortaled wight with a message for this nameless, Faceless woman. To thank her for marking Arya where she's most sensitive. Once, from pain. And now, to stupid, stupid, kicking and reckless joy.

Now, it's the secret that Arya tells under the cover of naked trust, one that breaths in the lines of darkened ridges on her skin. Every time his lips whisper back to them, Gendry imagines the kiss of life, hoping that if he imbues anything in her body when they touch, it's that of fire and eternities.

* * *

“Oh what a piss answer!”—Gendry’s mind snaps back to the tavern—“That’s not part of the game! You have to pick one,” Podrick says, all too loudly at that.

Pod's arm slaps across Gendry’s back like the flat of a fish, his grin stinking just as badly, snuffing out the candlelit memory.

Gendry sighs, turns, and spares Podrick his last bit of patience through gritted teeth— _“Tits,"_ he pities them.

Then he stands up, rolls his shoulders back, and stretches his neck clear above the tallest of Pod’s stray brown hairs.

“And if you, or any of you, so much as _think_ about _Her Grace_ like that, I’ll hit you so hard the Others wouldn’t want you.”


End file.
